Doug McIntyre: Homelessness is personal, not political

Richard "The Moustache" Alarcón, city councilman, perpetual candidate for office and accused perjurer, has starred in many a column for me at the Daily News. However, as reported in this newspaper on Tuesday, Alarcón revealed he has a 35-year-old schizophrenic son who is homeless.

"My son is homeless in the San Fernando Valley," Alarcón announced at the groundbreaking ceremony for the Day Street Apartments, a 46-unit development created by L.A. Family Housing, a non-profit agency and one of the county's largest providers of affordable housing.

I've never been one to skip an obvious joke, but I've got to cut The Moustache some slack on this one.

"He is lost in mental illness," Alarcón said, after recalling how he will occasionally spot his son on the street, scavenging for food near a Del Taco while driving around his district.

Or at least he says it's his district. Sorry, force of habit.

The plight of Alarcón's son points out just how difficult the issue of homelessness is.

When it's your child, it's not political it's personal.

But the homeless have been a political football for decades. We've had Republican presidents, governors and mayors, and Democratic presidents, governors and mayors, and yet the homeless continue to multiply, foraging for food while fending off the elements, degradation and threats of violence that come with a feral life on the street.

Meanwhile our city is the Homeless Capital of America.

We need a blunt conversation about the true nature of homelessness and not nonsensical platitudes about all of us being "one paycheck away" from landing on the streets.

Very few people would land on the street should circumstances drive them from their homes. Family would take them in, or friends, or they would seek shelter from public or charitable recourses until they could recover.

The people we see on the streets, or in most cases don't see, are nearly always mentally ill, alcoholic, drug-addicted or all of the above. Their lives are so out of control they have fallen outside the bounds of family and friends.

Most people just don't know what to do. They lack the experience, the knowledge and the resources to save their loved ones. The pain is impossible to understand until you've lived it.

And when a powerfully connected member of the City Council, presumably with access to every resource the city has to offer, still can't keep his own son off the street, we see just how intractable a problem homelessness is. Behind The Moustache is a worried father.

As the nation debates how to keep guns out of the hands of the criminally insane we need to expand that discussion to include all facets of America's true health care crisis: alcohol and drug-induced dementia and organic mental illness.

While we look to our political leaders for solutions to societal problems it's easy to forget politicians look to us to tell them what are our priorities. We the People must insist America's mental health crisis be addressed comprehensively or we'll continue to flub along doing more of what has never worked.

Doug McIntyre's column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. You can reach him at Doug@KABC.com.